Following the success of Anatomy of a Fall (and the difficulties some reviewers had with both French jurisprudence and its consequences for the courtroom drama) I thought I’d return to an earlier equally popular film which was arguably more widely seen, certainly in the UK. La vérité was very high profile, partly because of the reputation of the director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, but even more so because of the celebrity status of its star Brigitte Bardot. The film is structured as a courtroom drama and tells its story through flashbacks prompted by the exchanges in a Paris courtroom. The case being investigated concerns Dominique (Bardot), a young woman accused of murdering a talented young music student Gilbert (Sami Frey). Domique’s avocat Maître Guérin (Charles Vanel) argues that this was a ‘crime of passion’ while Maître Éparvier (Paul Meurisse), acting on behalf of Gilbert’s mother, attempts to destroy such a plea. The courtroom is very large and is packed with lawyers, press, friends and acquaintances and the general public. This was a big production and the film last for 128 minutes. I watched a restored version of the film on a Studio Canal Blu-ray (The same restoration is available on Criterion in the US).
Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-77) was a major figure in French cinema from the 1940s through to the late 1960s. He worked on productions for Continental Films, the German-controlled studio during the Occupation from 1940-44 and this initially froze him out of the post-war industry but he returned to make a number of very popular and exportable films, some of which are discussed on this blog. Clouzot was seen in France and to some extent in the US and UK as the ‘French Hitchcock’ and this courtroom drama might be compared to The Paradine Case (US 1949). The two films are not that similar, though Hitchcock has Alida Valli as the accused woman. I’m not sure the Hitchcock-Clouzot opposition is all that helpful but, like Hitchcock, Clouzot was known for surprising twists and suspense narratives – and he was also seen as harsh in his treatment of some actors, especially women. The French public in particular were intrigued by the prospect of Bardot in a Clouzot film.
Bardot herself was very anxious about appearing in the film because she was used to less dramatic roles in mainly ‘lighter’ films. She was also daunted by performing on such a large set before a gallery of some of the best dramatic actors in France. Bardot was around 24 when she made the film, playing a woman three or four years younger. She’d been involved in films since 1952 so was not an inexperienced player and she’d already been married to Roger Vadim for whom she starred in . . . And God Created Woman (France 1956). This was a hit around the world, including in the US. In the UK, Bardot had appeared opposite Dirk Bogarde in Doctor at Sea (UK 1955), one of the most popular films in the UK that year. Many of Bardot’s films were distributed in the UK making her perhaps the most famous ‘foreign film star’ of the time. But in none of these earlier films did she meet a director like Clouzot and the two fell out. The Studio Canal Blu-ray carries two substantial accounts of the ‘scandals’ associated with Bardot and Clouzot as well as an interesting short interview with Clouzot in which he reveals that his original intention was to make a film with Sophia Loren. It was the producer Raoul Lévy who insisted on Bardot. Clouzot then completely re-wrote the script. The interviewer puts forward the view, common at the time, that Bardot couldn’t act but Clouzot, while admitting she wasn’t a trained actor, refuted the assertion that she wasn’t a ‘true actor’. One scandal referred to Clouzot having slapped Bardot on set. She fought back and the result seems to have been a better performance. The other scandal saw Bardot beginning a relationship with her co-star Sami Frey soon after her marriage to Jacques Charrier and the birth of her son. Bardot remained a major attraction for photographers and scandal sheets throughout the shoot and the promotion of the film.
I don’t usually discuss these kind of scandals but in this case they are germane to how audiences might have read the film. Dominique is an example of that very late 1950s/early 1960s type, the ‘wild child’ or ‘juvenile delinquent’. She rebels against her conservative parents and when her slightly older sister Anne (Marie-José Nat) moves to Paris from Rennes to go to a conservatoire, Dominique goes with her, against her parents’ wishes and intent on having a good time. She fails to look for work and falls in with a group of students who are more ‘bohemian’ than Anne’s friends. Eventually she steals Anne’s boyfriend Gilbert, the brilliant but rather arrogant would-be orchestra conductor and moves out to make her own way. Does Dominique really love him or is it all just for show? This is what the trial attempts to find out. The President of the Court and the Avocat-General paint a picture of a wild child and Maître Éparvier attempts to destroy her defence.
The courtroom scenes work very well and there is some grit and realism in the exchanges. The film was photographed by a Clouzot regular, Armand Thirard. Bardot performs very well and there does seem to be genuine emotion behind her famous ‘pout’. I don’t know if the courtroom is a set or a real location but many of the outside scenes are shot ‘on the street’. What struck me most is that the courtroom seemed almost timeless or even old-fashioned, especially with the tutting bourgeois women in the audience and the old men in the jury (the defence having nixed any female members). But on the street and in the coffee bars and nightclubs, we see the Paris of the French New Wave – and sometimes scenes similar to the British New Wave of 1959-60. Check the poster above that recalls Beat Girl (1960) or Expresso Bongo (UK 1959). One of the street scenes takes place on a bank of the Seine and it reminded me of a similar scene in Truffaut’s Jules at Jim a year or so later. When Dominique is with the students and especially in cafés, there is also a whiff of Godard’s Bande à Part (1964). Bardot would appear for Godard in Le mépris (1963) but the main resemblance is perhaps with Chabrol’s Les bonnes femmes (1960) which features the same young women looking for excitement and the same bourgeois parents. Clouzot might have belonged to ‘le cinéma de papa’ for Truffaut, but on the street he was as alive to the excitement of Paris as much as the younger directors. Bardot seemingly came out of her experience with Clouzot with her reputation as a film actor established and she turned to more international projects in the 1960s while retaining her French following. In 1965 she starred with Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle’s Viva Maria!.
The film doesn’t attempt to explain the French judicial system for foreigners but the narrative doesn’t really need to as it all makes sense. The literary reference in Anatomy of a Fall is here matched by a reference to The Mandarins (1954) by Simone de Beauvoir, used to suggest that someone reading the book is somehow immoral. This reminds me that in the UK the obscenity trial against Lady Chatterley’s Lover concluded in 1960 with a victory for the publishers. La vérité seems ‘of the moment’ (it opened in the UK in 1961).
Here’s what seems like the UK trailer from Columbia, which picked up several French titles in the 1960s. If you don’t want to know how the murder happened be warned the trailer gives it away. Apart from the excellent Blu-ray the film doesn’t seem to be available on streamers (although some of the other Clouzot titles are).
The Case for Global Film 